23 July 2011 11:15 PM

Why does the BBC find it so hard to understand the past? Last week saw the launch of a new drama set in 1956, The Hour, attended with great trumpet blasts of publicity. It was, from top to bottom and from side to side, the most feeble, laughable tripe.

Yet it could have been so good, and I switched it on in the genuine hope that it would be. If you don’t like watching public humiliation or cooking, there is little enough to see on the TV. This is especially so since University Challenge turned into a scowling science lesson, and most news and documentary programmes are aimed at backward eight-year-olds with the attention span of a bedbug.

Which is why The Hour could have been great. There was, from the mid-Fifties to the early Sixties, a mighty revolution in TV news and current affairs. The story of how it happened, combined with the events that it covered, Suez, Hungary, the end of the Empire in Africa, and later the Cultural Revolution, could be great drama.

No such luck. TV producers seem to think that if they deploy enough cigarettes, bright-red lipstick and nail polish, not to mention a few dozen pairs of vintage spectacles, they have recreated the era of Anthony Eden. If they can hire a few old cars and clunky Bakelite telephones, they imagine they have attained utter perfection.

What they don’t seem to understand is that the spirit of the age is what they need to capture, and that people in those times were quite unlike us.

They really did speak in those strangled accents, and in complete sentences. That is because they thought differently, had grown up with different experiences from those we know. Everyone over 25 could remember the war. Men really were courteous to women, and women – including educated women – genuinely expected to get married and have children and saw nothing wrong in that. The men wore blue or grey suits (often shabby) and knotted their ties tightly.

Most women – particularly in offices – were compelled to be fairly dowdy by the general shortage of money. Career advancement came very slowly, and so deference was common in offices. People knew if their colleagues were married. Oh, and stabbings in London were so rare that they merited a bit more than a paragraph in the paper.

But The Hour revolves around two central characters who seem to have been transported direct from 2011 into 1956. The pair, played by Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai, stamped and flounced through the slow-moving scenes as if they were superior to the times they lived in, cross that everyone wasn’t Left-wing and politically correct like them, sure that they were about to inherit the Earth.

Did the director have a bit of a problem with persuading them to get into character? While all the other actors had been subjected to more or less authentic 1956 makeovers, these two looked as if they’d just wandered in from the Groucho Club, or wherever 2011 groovers go.

The BBC cannot recreate 1956 because it loves the present day too much, and is afraid to admit that anything about the past might have been better.

It was drugs that put Charlie in jail

I must disagree with my colleague Liz Jones about the 16-month prison term given to Charlie Gilmour, who swung on the Cenotaph.

The sentence is, of course, nothing like as long as it looks. He will serve half of it at most. It was not passed to do Gilmour any good and I shouldn’t think it will. It was passed on behalf of the millions who thought his behaviour disgraceful and felt he should be punished.

Our courts don’t do this often enough, which is why more and more people seek private revenge. By the way, if he hadn’t taken an illegal drug, the whole thing probably wouldn’t have happened.

What a pity that the laws against that crime have been quietly abandoned, and that the rock music industry has done so much to pretend that illegal drugs are OK, or he and his family would have been saved from much woe.

+++ I AM almost unable to believe that the devastation of our Armed Forces is happening so fast, and with so little protest, under a nominally Conservative Prime Minister and Defence Secretary. The Royal Navy has virtually ceased to exist, and the Army is being forced to rely on part-timers for a significant part of its strength.

Usually this drawing of teeth and pulling of nails is what happens to conquered nations as they take a foreign yoke. Even Vichy France was allowed a bigger army than ours by Hitler. I think perhaps we are a conquered nation, but just not willing to admit it in public.

Real politics thrives on a diet of custard pies

I say let’s have more custard pies in politics.

What is wrong with all the people who have adopted gloomy long faces and intoned about the dignity of Parliament, breaches of security and so forth? And why do Westminster’s broadcasting rules prevent the cameras from showing such events (which is why you have seen only a back view of the Murdoch splat)?

A pie in the face is a good test of a public figure, as is a bit of heckling. I suspect a few well-placed, well-timed pies might have halted the advance of Anthony Blair, who would have had to get Alastair Campbell to wipe them off and change his clothes for him.

The real damage done to Rupert Murdoch was not the pie, but his magnificent wife’s embarrassingly maternal response, as if her little boy had been attacked in the playground and couldn’t look after himself.

Mr Murdoch will never be a real tycoon again.

Yes, I know I’m asking for a pie of my own by saying this. And I have a pretty good idea when and where I’m going to meet it. I’ll let you know how I get on.

+++ THE vast folly of the European single currency becomes more obvious with every day that passes. It may yet be the ruin of us all.

Now that Rupert Murdoch has apologised for phone-hacking, isn’t it time that all the politicians, journalists, notables and ‘impartial’ broadcasters who backed the euro took out their own advertisement in the papers to apologise?

They need to say sorry not just for being stupid, gullible and ill-informed, but for the derision and insults (‘Little Englander’, ‘Xenophobe’ etc) that they heaped on people such as me who rightly warned against it.

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Oh dear. Perhaps I should never have posted about science questions on University Challenge.
I have no idea how many science questions there should be on University Challenge.
Nor on how hard they should be.
I am happy to leave the job to the people who set the questions for University Challenge. They do not need me to tell them how to do their job.
I too cannot answer the science questions on University Challenge.
Nor can I answer many of the other questions.
But I blame myself, not the questions.

MR. Hitchens, How could you say that people over twenty six,in 1956 remembered the war. As a twenty three year old in that year I most certainly remember the war years. It being the most exiting, interesting, dangerous decade in British history, believe me people of my age and a few years younger can never forget the decade of a Britain of sand bags and searchlights, bombs and barrage balloons, Yanks and tanks, air raid sirens and gas masks, Vera Lynn, Ann Shelton, Glen Miller and the Andrews sisters, and certainly not the greatest day ever in British history and still celebrated, VE Day. Ours was not a normal childhood, ours was the most unusual childhood in history. Eric Firth.

Surely if there were a *disproportionate* number of science questions, then the range of topics quizzed on would be narrower and the show wouldn’t have as wide an appeal. What’s more, this imbalance would likely lead to teams being less varied, in terms of the subjects the members had read. Besides, the title would therefore also seem inappropriate if a universality of knowledge were not covered.

"But there is something else, a silent tone of voice, so as to speak, which you can hear in your mind’s ear, so as to speak. When you wrote that University Challenge had turned into ‘a scowling science lesson’, you sounded miffed to me.
‘Why is Peter miffed?’, I wondered. ‘Maybe because he minds science questions’,
I thought. Mistaken perhaps,-but silly?".

I think you are being obtuse, perhaps deliberately. The original conception of University Challenge was that it was a general knowledge quiz, I agree that the boundaries for this knowledge were vast and one would have to be extremely well read to stand much chance of gaining a high mark, but one couldn't argue with their general nature. A lot of the science questions, along with some mathematical ones, are now so obscure and specialist that one would need to be a post graduate in a very narrow field to even understand, let alone answer, some of them. I have also noticed that, at the other end of the scale, there are an increasing number of quetions on what is called popular music, surely today's 'pop music' is completely ephemeral? Jeremy always seems bemused when someone answers one of these questions correctly.

"... there was an expectation in all classes that things were going to get better."

No doubt that is right, but whether it was due to circumstances rather than a 'different breed of person ' (if that is the thinking), is open to debate. Most people in the late 1950's would have first-hand experience of the war years, many of the long depression of the '30s. It would be somewhat surprising to think that 'looking on the bright side' was not the mood of the nation in the post-war decades. And I suspect that many of the present generation will be doing the same once the economy shows firm signs of improving.

The comments attacking the 1950s seem to me to have a touch of the childrens history book from 1984 about them.I am surprised there is no mention of the wicked capitalists in their top hats who had the legal right to sleep with any of the women working in their factories.The late 1950s, Macmillans never had it so good years always seemed to be a time of hope to me in my childhood. There was the fear of the bomb admittedly but apart from that there was an expectation in all classes that things were going to get better,People looked forward to the future in a way that they don't now. In fact the idea of the future has pretty much died.

Peter, thanks for the reply, but I've never stated anyone thought the 1950s were a 'golden age'. True I think they may be being recalled a bit too fondly at times, but there you go. I am intrigued though as to why you (and it seems others) think the matters I suggest as 'progress' are a matters of opinion rather than fact. Are you really suggesting that greater freedoms for women, less outright prejudice on grounds of sexuality, and greater opportunity for all, to take three examples, are bad things? Not all is right with the world today by some considerable margin, but I simply cannot see it as a worse place because we e.g. no longer jail homosexuals or think a woman's place must be in the home.

Peter Hitchens,
I did not assume that you minded there being science questions on ‘University Challenge. I just wondered if you did.
Why did I wonder that? Because you sounded to me as if you minded
When somebody writes something, you can see what the words mean, - touch wood!
But there is something else, a silent tone of voice, so as to speak, which you can hear in your mind’s ear, so as to speak. When you wrote that University Challenge had turned into ‘a scowling science lesson’, you sounded miffed to me.
‘Why is Peter miffed?’, I wondered. ‘Maybe because he minds science questions’,
I thought. Mistaken perhaps,-but silly?
Note ‘mistaken perhaps’. In the penultimate paragraph of your reply, you note that there are more science questions on ‘University Challenge’ than there used to be.
You put this down to a modernising trend.
If you are the man I take you for, you would see anything which you would call a ‘modernising trend’ as bad. So maybe you do mind there being science questions on ‘University Challenge’ after all, or at any rate think that there are too many of them.
On a constructive note, your idea for a television version of ‘Do Polar Bears Get Lonely’ or ‘Why Can’t Elephants Jump’ (read the books?) is good one.

CM Burns writes:-
"My point was only ever that the 1950s seem to be held in high esteem by many, but they weren't some sort of utopia.."

No human era has ever been a utopia. The 1950's far from it. But as with most people who seriously consider themselves to be of the traditional conservative centre-right - chasing utopias is for people who are unwittingly creating a living hell.

CM Burns writes:-
"The seeds of the increased social and cultural freedom that blossomed in the 1960s"

When I view what is happening around me today and put it all into context with that sad, self-destructive, decade which was the 1960's - and read how you evaluate it, why, and how you clearly hope the future will unfold from the seeds laid down by the cultural changes which, for you, 'blossomed' during those years - I realise that any future calamitous illusions of any utopia are not mine Mr Burns.

Cannot Mr Burns see that the following words of his: ' The continued establishment of the NHS (though that truly began in the late 1940s). Initiatives such as the Wolfenden Report and the knock-on effect of the work women did in the war being the beginning of the slow process of modernisation of British society. The seeds of the increased social and cultural freedom that blossomed in the 1960s. The erosion of the rigid class system. A reduction in the most extreme levels of poverty. The start of the slow process where those aspects (sorry, "politically correct obsessions") of society that were less savoury were dismantled. Or to put it another way - progress' is a statement of *opinion* and of chocie, not of fact. Not everyone thinks all these things were good, or improvements. The 'progressive' invariably assumes that his own preferences are the only available ones, classifies all radical and leftist change as 'progress' and denies that any disadvantages arising from this 'progress' are the responsiobility of his faction.

He also invariably defames his opponent with jibes such as 'you think the 1950s were a golden age' ( a sentiment I have never held to and never expressed, though dozens of people have dishonestly attributed it to me) , as if conservatives, like 'progressives' were unable to distinguish between good and bad.

Actually, this is the crucial distinction. Conservatives can so distinguish, because they have an absolute measure for this purpose - but oh dear, here comes Mr 'Wesley Crosland', waving his copy of 'The Origin of Species' and shouting.

Oh, as for the 'extremes of poverty', the Attlee revolution is a myth, Paul Addison (check him out) says that Britain , before World War Two, had the most advanced Welfare state in the world.

Good grief, P. Charnley. You've not so much read between the lines as written your own lines, then read between them. Politically correct obsessions? Is that trying to turn a liking for a level playing field for all into some sort of fault? The 1950s were less socially developed than the present day. That's a fact. My point was only ever that the 1950s seem to be held in high esteem by many, but they weren't some sort of utopia and had more than their fair share of misery too for a great many people (though I expect people then complained it wasn't like the 1920s, and so on). What to me was good about the 1950s? More of a sense of community post-war and that everyone really was in it together. The continued establishment of the NHS (though that truly began in the late 1940s). Initiatives such as the Wolfenden Report and the knock-on effect of the work women did in the war being the beginning of the slow process of modernisation of British society. The seeds of the increased social and cultural freedom that blossomed in the 1960s. The erosion of the rigid class system. A reduction in the most extreme levels of poverty. The start of the slow process where those aspects (sorry, "politically correct obsessions") of society that were less savoury were dismantled. Or to put it another way - progress.

Thank you for your reply - sorry that you found my question 'silly', but that is, of course, another matter of opinion.
Trying hard not to be consigned to the bin for eccentric old whingers, I do find your view somewhat 'tunnel-visioned', particularly coming from one who, like me, is possibly closer to the older generation and their likes and dislikes. I actually like the radio more than television, and I suspect I am not alone amongst the millions of 'older' listeners who would very much regret the loss of the wide choice of listening provided by you-know-who. And with four advert-free television channels now provided, and with a little pre-planning, I find their TV coverage reasonably adequate.
But I do accept that if I were someone wired into what appears to be your remarkably sensitive TV receiver, I might join those who appear to yearn for the arrival of a FoxNews look-alike channel.

Of course, you could always follow the example of certain other contibutors and give your tv set the old heave-ho, and thus avoid any risk of joining the whingers club.

‘If you don’t like watching public humiliation or cooking, there is little enough to see on the TV.’

One thing that there is no shortage of on telly, however, is drama with a premise involving murder. It’s puzzling how the most heinous of crimes is now so often depicted in our ‘entertainment’. How is it that a lot of television shows (and games) seem to need violence to make them appealing?

I am suggesting you that your mindset is dominated by politically correct obsessions that are fully revealed by your latest posting.

The monotone tint of the lenses through which you choose to view the 1950s is revealed by your reference to, quote, "......wife beating and casual sexism, racism and homophobia".

CM Burns, I couldn't actually care less whether 'The Hour' is true period drama or not. I shall not be watching it. My previous comments were primarily about the definition of such entertainment. Objective, honest reflection (entertaining - for some - or not) is plainly not the inspiration behind this drama.

Examples of such productions will ironically provide material for future reflection focusing on this age.

But I am interested - you say that you, quote, "made a point of saying that there were things about the past that were better than now". And yet your minds seems totally dominated by - "wife beating and casual sexism, racism and homophobia", not to mention your earlier posting of :-

"A time when a certain type of man could go to the pub and joke with his mates about how someone had been locked up for simply being gay before driving home steaming drunk and beating his wife and kids. The wife couldn't leave because it was so difficult to get a divorce and so everyone struggled on putting a brave face on it while utterly miserable beneath. And all this capped with the threat of global nuclear armageddon. A world that was only pleasant to live in for the very few, where no one was allowed to get ideas above their station (or, as we call it today, have aspirations). Come from a poor family? No university for you. Get yourself a crushing manual job and be grateful. Woman? Get in the kitchen or be a nurse. Not white? Don't even think about hoping for a nice life free of abuse."

Wow (I wasn’t alive in the 1950’s – but were those low suicide rates, low crime rates, the widespread social benefits of unbroken two parent homes, hierarchical school systems that produced uniformly literate and numerate students and which did allow the poor and gifted a route to professional status etc. etc. etc. really so much of an illusion?)

However, I'll take my 'rose tinted spectacles", as you call them, off for the time being, Mr or Ms CM Burns.

You can be my ‘vision express’. You said, without detail, that some things were better. I am fascinated - what, for you, peeps out, in a positive context, from the portrait you paint of the shackles, gloom, seething resentment and widespread despair of this era.

Alan Thomas: Risking the possibility of being met with another' "Time-waster! Pah!", can I repectfully ask if that is a factual statement or simply your personal view?

No, I think 'silly question' might be more appropriate.

Anyway, to clarify what I meant by my claim (for that is all it is!) that the BBC wants older people to "go away" - of course the BBC doesn't mind us watching its output as long as we just sit quietly and lap it up (or ideally, heap praise on it, via one of its various, selective "feedback" mechanisms).
But if you should complain about standards or mention the relentless politically correct socio-political bias, then you will be immediately consigned to the bin marked "eccentric old whingers whose opinion is without value and who should be patronised, ridiculed and caricatured at every opportunity".

I'm reminded in this of an incident in Buster Keaton's life when, in the 1940s he was hired by the producers to advise on a Hollywood movie being made about the 'golden' silent era and they were getting it all wrong. When he protested at all the inaccuracies and distortions, the arrogant young director didn't want to hear about it and told him, "Shut up old man, we know how we want to make this movie. You've had your day, for you the parade's gone by".

'Curtis' (Tony, or Le May? ) asks :' Is it that that you just do not want there to be questions on science on ‘University Challenge.?

My answer 'No,I never said that, so why assume that it is what I think?.

He then asks :'If that is how you feel, why?'

My answer, 'It isn't how I feel. See below.'

He then asks :' If it is all right to ask questions about literature or history or whatever in a quiz, why is not all right to ask questions about science?'

My answer:

I've explained here before that University Challenge is supposed to be a General Knowledge quiz. The Science questions are not general ( such as 'who discovered...? Or 'The Cavendish Laboratory was the scene of ...' or anything of that type which a well-informed generalist might be expected to know). I would welcome such questions. As it is, as soon as a science question is asked I (along, I suspect with 95% of the audience) have to sit and wait until the student team has stopped looking blank ( as they usually do) and a couple of minutes tick by, before Jeremy Paxman (who plainly doesn't understand the questions himself) laboriously reads out an answer he didn't know and cannot himself understand.

They are particular, often so particular that graduate scientists on the panel are baffled by them. Questions on art, history, music or geography are never as particular, and could be answered by a reasonably well-informed science specialist. The equivalent would eb questions on literary critciism and historiography instead of on literature and history, and on detailed argumnents in linguistic philosophy and theology, instead of questions about ' Which Humanist thinker ...' whose answer is always 'Erasmus' , who wasn't a humanist.

Also, the number of science questions, especially as starter questions, has risen greatly in the past ten years (at the same time there has been an obsessive use of kilometres rather than miles, kilograms rather than pounds, hectares rather than acres, etc) . It is quite clear that the changes are deliberate and part of a 'modernising' trend of some sort.

If BBC2 want to set up a programme called 'A Question of Science', in which scientists answer detailed and specific questions about science in front of an audience of scientists, with a question-master who is himself or herself a scientist, good luck to them. It might be a surprise success. In the meantime, I've more or less given up on one of the very few TV programmes I still watch.

Peter Hitchens,
In the second paragraph you say that ‘University Challenge’ has turned into a scowling science lesson.
What is bugging you, Peter?’
Is it that that you just do not want there to be questions on science on
‘University Challenge.?
If that is how you feel, why?
If it is all right to ask questions about literature or history or whatever in a quiz, why is not all right to ask questions about science?

Risking the possibility of being met with another' "Time-waster! Pah!", can I repectfully ask if that is a factual statement or simply your personal view?
I am reasonable confident that the older generation are, in fact, the more die-hard supporters of the BBC. That may well be down to the fact that Sky or Cable Subscription TV is not always their cup of tea, but why should the BBC want the oldies, of which I am one, to 'go away'?

"Why not Mark? He does it all the time. He's very touchy though it's easy to push the right buttons and make him foam at the mouth which I rather enjoy. He then says he's not interested in my opinions but, strangely, it takes him about 2000 words to say it."

Very true. Must admit, the thought of him foaming at the mouth is quite funny. If I could find this site I'd be tempted to scroll on over and contribute an opinion or two as it sounds like fun. Nothing too over-bearing I'm sure you'd agree, just a merry greeting to see him on his way. Still, I will resist (reasons outlined below)!.

I would love to view your conversations though...I could do with a laugh at the moment- am bogged down with assignments at the minute hence why my contributions have dwindled the last week or two..

Hello John- thanks for your nice comment. Yes, I'm sure he'd love the attention (perfect description by the way) . Personally I think it would do him good to realise that nobody reads his tripe or takes him seriously. I remember he used to comment on here freely without any retorts or replies and that he never ever bothered to reply to anyone or justify his ludicruous waffle. A good dose of being not noticed is the perfect remedy...

I know, I know, I'm too kind. I try to be merciful..

Must admit, I'm so glad that secular humanist claptrap is not clogging up this site anymore. Even my scroll button used to nod off, or get annoyed and start crashing all over the place..

Sorry, Peter Charnley, I'm not sure what you are suggesting my "mindset" is - that I am not willing to look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, that I think an era when things we rightly think of as entirely socially unacceptable today were undisputedly documented as being fairly commonplace is worse rather than better, or that I'm willing to accept that drama doesn't have to be 100% historically accurate to be enjoyable in its own right? Unless a person were a proponent of drink driving, wife beating and casual sexism, racism and homophobia, or obsessive about period detail in what is after all a work of fiction, I don't see why any of those is a particularly awful stance. I made a point of saying that there were things about the past that were better than now, so I also see no reason why you should jump to any conclusions about what I think about the present day either.

Christopher Charles is quite right to point out that Shakespeare's plays are dodgy when judged as faithful representations of history. But there are some important differences between the works of the Bard and any BBC drama production.
Five hundred years after he wrote them and in some cases a couple of thousand years after the period in which they are set, we can contextualise the historic accuracy issues and simply enjoy the insights and poetry of finest writer that the English language has ever seen. The real histories of these periods is sufficiently well known to make Shakespeare's distortions harmless.
By contrast, the deliberate misrepresentation (and it is deliberate, not as some correspondents have suggested, merely an hapless failure of accuracy) of an era which many living people can remember is mendacious and more importantly is something we ought to be able do something about, since it is being perpetrated by people whose wages we pay directly with the licence fee. The key issue is that only oldies like myself can remember the fifties and we are the very people that the BBC wishes would just go away, since it embarrasses them to have people around who can remember the BBC at a time before, having got bored with the kitchen sink, it decided to grovel in the gutter.

Just to add to my comment on the subject of Sarah Palin and the 'strange world of American politics', I see the Telegraph has a report concerning a gentleman by the name of Glenn Beck, right-wing broadcaster and 'darling of the Tea Party', who has compared the labour party youth camp in Norway as 'bearing disturbing similarities to the Hitler Youth'.
Just an instance of saying stupid things when on the back foot? Or, to use an expression one of our own jounalists, a case of 'you couldn't make it up' when it come to American politics?

It is not the subject matter so much as the few lines dedicated to the issue. But the issue is more complicated than that - of course as a libertarian, I am all up for decent national defence of the land and borders, but the topsy turvy world we live in is so badly trapped and economically strangled that this is actually lower down the list of priorities. Right now, my priority would be to disentangle the populous from the overbearing, oppressive and thuggish manacles of the state. Get it to back off, shrink and to give us power over self and destiny back.

Once we become freer, more prosperous and independent as individuals, then we can get on with the task of reshaping democracy, losing the chains of the EU and getting the state to do what it is supposed to do - law and order, army, and regulation of monopolies.

Nice to hear from Mark. Agree with all that. And sorry to Michael Williamson for doing a typo on his name.

I realised I was a bit silly for giving publicity to a sad, degenerate loser with a lame one-man-band facebook page. So I'll lay off that topic.

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